Welcome to Secrets of Home Theater and High
Fidelity in cyberspace! This magazine, dedicated to the enjoyment
of audio and video entertainment, is published in primarily an
electronic format. It will be available, free (for a while,
anyway) to any who choose to read it on-line, and will be posted
in several places, such as the Newsgroups rec.audio.misc,
rec.audio.opinion, rec.audio.tech, rec.video, the CEVIDEO forum
home theater library, and AOL. Secrets will contain articles by
numerous specialists in the field of audio-video, as well as
equipment reviews, and other items of interest. Volume 1, Number
1, 1994 is a monograph which explains the basics of home theater
and high fidelity technology. It is under constant revision
thanks to the many constructive comments I receive from
Compuserve forum members and readers of the newsgroups. Version
3.0 has been posted, and I am sure there will be further
suggestions by readers for the next level of improvement. When it
is finally completed, it should be a valuable reference to those
non-professionals who need a basic reference to the exploding
field of home theater. You may also want to read the
FAQ:rec.audio.* file on the Usenet Newsgroup rec.audio.misc. It
contains a lot of useful information on setting up an audio
system.

There are a number of things different
about Secrets than other audio/video publications. For one thing,
there are no graphics. Because it is electronic, downloading the
magazine for reading takes enough time as it is, without the
added wait for pictures. The entire text of the magazine may
total 135 kilobytes or so. Just one small graphic alone could
amount to 35 kilobytes. Later on, when the transmission speed of
modems in home computers increases substantially - and this will
happen soon - we may add graphics. However, what this means for
the present, is that you won't see graphs showing frequency
response or harmonic distortion curves. We will present
measurements based on certain tests that don't require the
presentation of such curves. In any case, the brain is a far
better oscilloscope and the ears far better microphones for
analysis, as the sensory and emotional experience outweigh and
sometimes contradict what is seen on a waveform monitor.

Our staff consists mainly of people who are
experienced with musical instruments. For example, we have those
who have played the piano, flute, violin, trombone, percussion
instruments, classical guitar, and electric bass guitar. Some
have played orchestral music and hard rock. None of us expect any
audio system to fool us into thinking we are actually listening
to live music. Such a system does not exist. What we look for in
an audio system is a sound that is pleasurable and has natural
qualities to it. The violin solo can sound natural without us
thinking that the musician and instrument are really in the room.
If the sound raises the hair on the nape of the neck, or brings
tears to the eyes, so much the better. Sometimes the brain can be
fooled just a little bit with certain types of distortion, such
as the even order harmonics that are added with tube amplifiers.
Such distortions can be pleasurable, if not completely natural
sounding (the brain may not detect that it is not natural), and
we will be discussing these types of issues. The staff all
contribute to the equipment reviews, but, for the time being,
only my name will appear at the end of each review.

When you read the equipment reviews, you
will notice something right away: We don't publish reviews that
are negative. The reasons for this are several. For one thing,
negative findings are not scientific facts, but rather, they are
opinions. As Editor-in- Chief of two biomedical and technical
journals, I do not accept articles for publication that represent
negative findings. If for example, a scientist has a theory that
"If A, then B" and does not find the connection, we do
not publish the article, because the experiment has neither
proved "If A, then B", nor has it disproved it. This
approach, we feel, is even more important in listening to or
viewing audio or video equipment. There is no real science here;
we are simply reporting opinions on how we respond to the
equipment, and our response depends on numerous factors such as
the room, our mood, listening preferences, past experiences
(which affect the emotional response), age (hearing capability),
and so on. Secondly, we don't want to waste space that can
otherwise be devoted to positive experiences. We feel that
readers would rather spend time looking at a list of equipment
that they should consider auditioning rather than a list of
things that they shouldn't.

Thus, we have a rejection rate for
equipment reviews. When we test equipment that we conclude would
have a negative review, we return the equipment to the
manufaturer with our comments. The manufacturer can do whatever
they want with our comments - make some modifications and
resubmit the equipment later, throw the comments away, or
whatever.

The rejection rate for equipment to be
reviewed in Secrets so far is about 35%. This is an interesting
number, because the rejection rate for the biomedical journal I
edit is 44% and has fluctuated only about plus or minus 2% from
this number for several years. It will be interesting to see how
the rejection rate for Secrets fluctuates during the coming
years. I should reiterate that the rejection of material for the
biomedical journal is based on scientific reasons, while the
decision not to publish negative reviews is based on opinions
about the products. These would include noticeable distortion,
construction quality, ergonomics, overheating, lack of features,
etc. That is not to say that we won't mention a caveat here and
there, but the overall review would have to be negative before we
would decide to pass on it. We do not contend that 35% of
audio-video products out there are unsuitable, but rather, our
own statements on them would not be flattering. Undoubtedly, some
of these products will be reviewed in other magazines, and some
will have positive reviews because their experiences with them
are positive. On the other hand, some of the equipment we give a
positive review to may receive a negative review in those
magazines which publish negative findings. After all, we are only
talking about opinions here. However, we feel it is easier to
relate to a positive experience than a negative one and will be
publishing the former and not the latter. A significant amount of
the review text may be devoted to explaining fundamental
principles governing the technology. This is part of our plan to
discuss the "how" and "why" of good audio and
video, rather than just the "what". Professionals in
the field may want to just skip over these parts of the reviews.

Another factor regarding reviews is that
you will see some equipment that has limited distribution in the
United States, even though the magazine originates here in the
U.S. Since Internet reaches the farthest corners of the planet,
we feel that equipment from manufacturers in various countries
deserves coverage.

There are many changes occurring in the
audio-video industry right now. High Definition Television (HDTV)
is almost upon us. Digital surround sound, with stereo in the
rear channels as well as the front will accompany HDTV. Laser
discs with this type of sound are being released in February of
this year, with players to follow in the spring, and decoders
(receivers) in the summer. Much controversy is involved, because
of the data compression which is used to encode the sound. I
heard the new digital surround sound (Dolby Surround AC-3) at the
Consumer Electronics Show held in Las Vegas a few weeks ago, and
it sounds great. Having stereo in the rear adds a terrific new
dimension to the home theater experience, and I look forward to
having this in our testing lab, as well as my own home.

Compact discs with surround sound encoding
are becoming more and more common. Such things point to the
increased probability that we will be incorporating music
listening into our home theater systems. High-end audio
manufacturers are rushing to produce preamplifiers, power
amplifiers, and speakers for home theater use. There is
controversy here too. Audio purists tend not to want any extra
circuitry in the signal path. Home theater electronics
necessitate additional such circuitry. So, there will be a
concerted effort on the manufacturer's part to produce home
theater equipment that has much higher standards than in the
past. This is wonderful, because there is no real reason not to
incorporate music listening with audio-video entertainment. In
fact, there are many laser discs already with operas, orchestral
works, jazz, and rock, which have digital audio as well as the
accompanying video of the performers.

Manufacturers are also experimenting with
increased density digital sound, as well as audio-video
performances on smaller discs. We will have more and more choices
for our sound and video systems in the very near future, and
Secrets of Home Theater and High Fidelity will be there to keep
you informed.

We welcome your comments and questions for
publication. They should be submitted in the form of a letter to
the editor, specifying which article you are referring to. We
also welcome suggestions as to what you would like to see covered
(article topics and equipment reviews) in future issues. For
example, would you like to see reviews of new laser disc movies?
All correspondence in this regard should be sent to the editor at
76055.2216@Compuserve.Com rather than tying up forum or bulletin
board space with them. If you wish, you may open an active
discussion in the forums and bulletin boards, but these
discussions will not be published in the magazine.

If you read Secrets of Home Theater and
High Fidelity on line, please drop us a note over Internet as to
your technical background, the city and country where you live,
and other audio/video publications that you read.